Multiple slots technique for bandwidth enhancement of microstrip rectangular patch antenna

This paper discusses the investigation of bandwidth enhancement for microstrip rectangular patch antenna by putting up multiple slots etched on the patch. The technique is proposed in overcoming the nature characteristic of microstrip patch antenna which has narrowband bandwidth response. Here, the antenna is designed to work at center frequency around 1.6GHz for GPS application. The patch of antenna is fed by using a microstrip transmission line feeding network extended from a center pin of 500hm SMA connector. The number of slots etched on the patch is set to be 13 which are separated 3mm each other. The 13 slots which have different length for each are arranged in parallel with the feeding line. To shows the feasibility of proposed technique, the characteristics of microstrip patch antenna with multiple slots are compared to the conventional microstrip patch antenna. Both antennas are implemented using FR-4 Epoxy dielectric substrates with the dimension of 55mm × 80mm and the thickness of 1.6mm. From the characterization, although there are some slight differences of simulation and measurement results, in general the microstrip patch antenna with multiple slots demonstrates bandwidth enhancement up to 98.3% and 70.8% for simulated result and measured result, respectively.